An international literary journal from 1984 to 2018, Verse now administers the Tomaž Šalamun Prize.

Thursday, January 06, 2005

New year's announcements

The 20th anniversary issue of Verse is being shipped by the printer this week. We already have pre-orders for more than half of the extra copies we printed, so if you are thinking about using the edition for a class, please contact Brian Henry (bhenr [at] yahoo [dot] com) within the next week or two.

10% of the proceeds from the sale of the 20th anniversary issue of Verse will be donated to relief organizations assisting people affected by the Indian Ocean tsunami. Please consider donating to these organizations yourself if you haven't already done so. Numerous web pages--Google, Yahoo, Apple, Buzzflash--include lists with links.

A list of books, chapbooks, & magazines available for review will post soon.

From now on, all reviews for Verse will appear on the site. Exceptions: reviews of books associated with special issues, which will be commissioned specifically for those issues. Publishing reviews exclusively on the site allows us to publish reviews more quickly, which seems particularly important with chapbooks & magazines. We also can publish more reviews this way. Ultimately, this will allow us to publish more poems in the print journal.

Please note: we don't agree with all of the reviews published here. In fact, we frequently disagree with them. But as long as reviews avoid ad hominem attacks and reviewers support their claims, we will publish them. Having had our own reviews censored by editors afraid to offend the "esteemed," we are not interested in following suit. Besides, it's boring when you know what a reviewer is going to say before you read the review because of where the review is published. We feel that criticism in a magazine should reflect a range of opinions and positions, not just the editors', and that reviewers should be free to pursue their own ideas without editorial interference. Please keep that in mind when you read the 100 or so reviews on this site in 2005, when you considering reviewing for Verse, and when you write your reviews.